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Untitled Article
Cunningham , ' Mr . LoWther , avid other evangelical gentlemen , who . have strangely taken it into th ^ ir head % that the Waldena 3 s , although generally allowed' to be the mc « st ancient Christian church now existing , are even , at the present day , unconverted I have heard an Englishman , of evangelical sentiments , and a Vaudois ** MoMkrf uniting to deplore what they called
the f ' eotatfesa of the Valleys . " u KtheLoid , " said they , " would be pleased to take compassion upon them , and to shed forth his spirit in the Valleys as he is now doing at Geneva , at Lausanne , at Nice \ Human means can do little for them , but the distribution of tracts must not be neglected / ' Well meaning , but mistaken enthusiasts ! In which of the " fruits of the spirit" do not tte objects of your pity already excel the majority of their Christian
brettrreh ? One of its distinguishing characters , that of a " sound mind" I fear they will be in much danger of losing under their new instructors in the gospel . In one of the translations 1 alluded to , texts are put together in a very ingenious manner from the Old and New Testament in one paragraph , to make it appear that Jesus Christ and Jehovah are the same being , e . g . " By the Wor © of the Lord were the heavens made . And the Word was with God ; and the Wobd . was Gt > d ^ And this Word was Christ . ' Another
tract , intended for the instruction of children , opens with an account of a lattle girl receiving from her mamma the intelligence that her father had been she * in the battle of Waterloo , and being asked by her u if she did not thank Odd f or-having taken him to himself . " Her mother being ill at the same time ,, the infant disciple was asked by a zealous relative , " If God should take : dtibdif four mother 9 too * would you not love hint still more on this adcount t Thus are the sentiments of piety exaggerated ajad distorted by the writers of the tracts which now issue from the teeming presses of the " Reformed Church" of Geneva , for the conversion of the Vaudois . On Monday morning , Kov . 13 th , I had a call from the pastor of Villa Secca , the moderator " axfyoint . " His appearance , I am sorry to say , was that of great poverty , which it was highly painful to observe in a very worthy man . Though poor in wealth he is rich in cures , having ^/ we villages under his charge * He kindly invited me to accompany him to one of these , called Rioclaretto , where he was that morning to hold an examination of the
state of religion ini that portion , of his flock . This invitation I accepted with the greatest pleasure * The village stands pretty high up the mountain , on the south side of the glen of San Mactino , and the snows lay deep all around us . We conversed oa the subject of religion , chiefly on the person of Christ . I told him at the first ( as I always did in my conversations on
religious subjects ) tihat I was an Unitarian Christian , that I considered our Saviour to have been only the Messiah , and not superior in nature as well as in office' to the other ambassadors of the Deity , and to have had no existence before he appeared in the worid ; adding , that 1 regarded the Father as the sole Deity of Christians ^ and the exclusive object of their worship . He remarked that the Vaudois also addressed their prayers to One God * in the
name of Jesus Christ , but that there were many passages which were considered to justify the worship of Christ . For instance , " Before Abraham was , I cmS * I remarked' tnat our . Saviour was fafora Afoahatn y inasmuch as he took greatly the precedence of him in point of importance , authority , and the design for which he lived , and that , things being said in Scripture language to exist or to have taken place winch God had destined to do so , our Saviour might be said to have had an eternal existence , inasmuch as he
Untitled Article
The Wnldenses . 723
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1827, page 723, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1801/page/11/
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